A public conveyance model and analysis on clustering of vehicles

Abstract

A new Public Conveyance Model (PCM) applicable to buses and trains is proposed in this study by using stochastic cellular automaton. We apply our PCM to the bus system and measure the efficiency of the system. By using mean field analysis, we estimate the average velocity and the waiting passengers in the low density limit. We have obtained the theoretical results which are in good agreement with numerical simulations. It is also observed clustering of vehicles which is caused by the time delay effect of passengers when they get on a vehicle. We have found that the big cluster of vehicles is divided into small clusters, by incorporating information of the number of vehicles between successive stops. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.